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WWI Wildman Charles Nungesser
By Jim "Twitch" TittleArticle Type: History
Article Date: March 2nd, 2001
The Western Front
5,000 feet above the French airfield at Verdun the two biplanes dueled. The high-pitched whine of the rotary engines was only interrupted by the sound of machine-gun fire.
Then one plane's wings collapsed and it came spinning down. It was a Nieuport of the Layfayette Escadrille—the all-American squadron.
The unfortunate pilot's mother had just arrived from the States to visit that afternoon in 1916.
But before the machine hit the ground a white French Nieuport was lifting off the grass. It quickly climbed to engage the German. With a single burst the enemy machine was set afire from gas tank hits. The fire spread over the fabric covering and the plane dropped to the ground. It was still burning when the Frenchman landed nearby.
Soon the intrepid flyer was introducing himself to the slain American's mother. "Madame, here is the murderer of your son," he said as he dumped the immolated body of the German at her feet while she gasped in shock.
The man responsible for this immediate retribution was Captain Charles Eugene Nungesser.
A Wild Child
France's most colorful pilot of WWI had forty-seven confirmed victories with as many again unofficial. Much of the aerial combat took place one-on-one and confirmation was difficult if it occurred behind enemy lines.
Nungesser ranked third behind the small, insipid and moody Rene Fonck with seventy-five victories and the legendary Georges Guynemer with fifty-three, who was weakened with tuberculosis and failed to return from a mission in 1917.
The debonair Nungesser was outgoing and always ready for a fight or fun. After a day in the air he would fly to Paris and spend the night in high-octane parties. He was well known on the boulevards and cafes and always accompanied by at least one beautiful mademoiselle. He even had an affair with the famed Mata Hari.
Charles Nungesser
Born March 15, 1892, Charles became a skilled professional boxer known throughout Europe when he was but a teenager. But his wanderlust put him aboard a freighter to Argentina where he became a gaucho!
Arriving back in France at the outbreak of war, he enlisted in the Hussars cavalry outfit and won a medal within two weeks of fighting. From there his wartime escapades read like a Hollywood script.
Once his regiment was surrounded and reinforcements could only be secured from a garrison ten miles distant. Nungesser volunteered to go for help. He drove a powerful car at night without headlights at breakneck speeds over the country roads until enemy soldiers opened fire.
Wounded, he careened off the road, struck a tree and rolled over. He crawled out and hid till morning when he heard a vehicle approach. Throwing some branches across the road the Germans halted to investigate. Nungesser shot all four officers in the staff car; dressed in an Imperial German colonel's uniform and drove their car to the French garrison. Reinforcements arrived to save his beleaguered regiment.
In The Air
Needing more adventure, he joined the Aviation Militaire in March of 1915. Assigned to a bombing wing, his job was to drop steel darts on German infantrymen. Nungesser had a better idea. He loaded up his feeble Maurice Farman Shorthorn S-11 with hand grenades and flew at near ground level to the German lines. The light aerial bombs of the time were terribly inaccurate anyway. Tossing grenades and shouting insults, he made the first strafing run in history.
Given the machines of the time, flying was considered highly dangerous without being shot at. It is no wonder his plane's name was "Express for Hell."
Once at twilight he strafed an ammo dump with his machine-gun and the machine caught fire in the subsequent explosion. German antiaircraft gunners painted him with a searchlight and opened up. "Dead meat," they thought.
With a series of violent maneuvers he fanned out the fire and barreled in to destroy the gun battery, searchlight and their crews.
Nieuport 11
After 53 missions he transferred to Squadron No. 65 flying the Nieuport 11, known as the Baby (Bébé). The 11 could muster 104 mph from its 80 hp Le Rhone rotary and mounted a Hotchkiss or Lewis above the top wing. The Baby was ascendant over the Fokker E I and E II monoplane.
Albatross
One evening five, two-gunned Albatross D I's intruded. One carried the markings of Oberleutnant Max Immelman. Nungesser rose to meet them. Though the D I had 150 hp, the 6-cylinder inline water-cooled Benz engine could barely top out at 109 mph. due to its heavier weight.
The Frenchman's gun jammed and he drew his revolver to continue the fight. A lucky round hit Immelman's engine and he dead-sticked into no man's land. As he scurried for his lines Nungesser continued to blaze away with his handgun, but to no avail.
In The Boudoir
Once while relaxing and performing his infamous stunt flying near his base, his engine quit and he crashed through the window of a house. The young lady inside was unharmed but figured the pilot was certainly dead.
Clambering from the wreck the suave ace removed his helmet and with a bow remarked, "Forgive the intrusion mademoiselle."
In Paris dancers and actresses competed to accompany Nungesser on his evening party tour of the capitol. It was rumored that the skullcap beneath his flying helmet was made of Mata Hari's stockings.
Mata Hari was suspected of spying for the Germans. With American airman Bert Hall, passed off as a millionaire's son, they delighted in feeding Hari outlandish "classified intelligence" for several nights running in the cabaret where she danced. Berlin replied to her “information” in a coded message that she should lay off the liquor!
Heavier Metal
Captain Nungesser volunteered to test pilot the Ponnier M.1. On January 19, 1916 he suffered a bad crash in it, fracturing his skull, jaw, one leg and shoulder. A rib punctured a lung and the joystick pierced his throat forcing him to use an artificial gold palette to be able to talk during his remaining years.
Doctors said he'd never fly again, but the indefatigable Nungesser went AWOL from the hospital two months later and was in a new Spad VII busting balloons when the German offensive pushed Verdun.
Spad VIII
With protest he continued to fly during the battle and one day while balloon busting he was set upon by five Fokker D IIs. He had shot down one but while holding an explosive round in his teeth, to be inserted in his gun for the balloon, it went off prematurely and shattered his jaw again. The Spad, being the Thunderbolt of its era, soon out-dived the Germans.
Upon return to his field he climbed out and saluted the famous Marshall Joffre, who was on an inspection tour, and collapsed. Four days later he was AWOL from the hospital and rejoined his group..
In December 1916 he alone attacked 20 Halberstadts and flamed their leader in a head-on attack. Two more German machines collided in the confusion as the wild man dived to attack an Albatross that was peppering a British recon plane below.
His stealthy approach allowed him to soon be above the German fighter where he dropped a hand grenade into the cockpit. The explosion buckled the top wing of his Spad and he spun in.
He regained consciousness to find his head cradled in the lap of Queen Marie of Rumania who was visiting a nearby convent and was witness to the air battle. And once again he was soon escaping the confines of the hospital to the sanctity of flying and fighting.
Captain Nungesser ended the war as the most decorated airman in the world though seriously wounded 17 times with two bullets still in his body. Every award of the Allies presented were his. When he wore them all his medals on ceremonial occasions he was festooned from his shoulder to his waist!
Before Lindbergh?
The $25,000 prize for being the first to cross the Atlantic nonstop was a dangling carrot for Nungesser. Three attempts to cross west to east had ended in failure.
On May 8, 1927, twelve days before Charles Lindbergh took off from New York, Nungesser and co-pilot Major Francois Coli rolled out a big white-colored Levasseur Marine biplane at Le Bourget airport. Its destination was Roosevelt field, N.Y. The White L'Oiseau Blanc could cruise at 110 mph for 4,300 miles with its 450 hp engine.
The plane struggled to the air and was seen off the coast of Ireland. The weather over the North Atlantic turned sour later in the day with high winds, rain and snow.
Off Newfoundland, Coast Guard Cutter Tampa stood vigil with searchlight beacons penetrating the fog but the indestructible Nungesser and Coli never arrived though people on the ground in scattered locals heard a lonely aircraft engine in the fog.
In 1961 fishermen off Jewell Island, Maine trawled up a piece of aircraft wreckage that some experts said was from The White Bird.
But the final chapter comes from a search that turned up parts that seem to be from the ill-fated plane in a remote area of Maine. The White Bird had made landfall but was lost in the fog.
A Personal Insight
When I was in college many years ago I worked at a restaurant with a lady who was a French nurse during WWI. I asked her if she'd heard of Nungesser, which I pronounced "Noneguesser." Her matter-of-fact reply was, "Oh yes. Only we pronounce his name differently. He was in my hospital on several occasions but we could never keep him there. He was much too wild."
Bibliography:
Fuller, J.F.C.
Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier
Nicholson & Watson, 1936
Green, William
The Complete Book of Fighters
Smithmark Publishers, N.Y., 1994
Lewis, Latane
“The Zany Pilot Who Kicked the Luftwaffe to Hell”
Action For Men Vol. 6 No.2
Vista Publications, March, 1962
Macksey, Kenneth.J.
The Shadow of Vimy Ridge
Kimber Publishing, 1965
Macksey, Kenneth.J.
Tank
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970
